The critique of anybody from the "baseload is dead and storage is licked society" must be taken with the smallest grain of salt. Also, it's ingenuous to lump hydro into claims supporting renewables. Hydro was here before solar, wind and friends and will be so long as climatic conditions allow (ask Tasmania, BTW). It's what's beyond hydro that is at question.

If anyone lives in Lalaland it's you, Max. Your approach is entirely built upon the edifice of burning gas, which will oftentimes be needed to produce nearly all main-grid electricity, so full infrastructure must be built to do so.

Doesn't Germany's failure with renewables inform your thoughts a jot? It's spent billions upon billions while being connected to Nordic hydro and French nuclear but still builds coal and has growing emissions. It's a dead-end as far as the main-grid is concerned.

FOE does go very, very hard at Mr Heard! He must be onto something.

Dear readers,

I thank Jim for his response. In particular, his pointed inability to address the substance of the argument, and instead launch a fully blown personal attack, is telling as to the quality of his original piece.

I and the board and members are incredibly proud of our organisation Bright New World. www.brightnewworld.org . Our donations policy is publicly available and posted here https://www.brightnewworld.org/how-to-give-our-donations-policy/ . Our policy is consistent with NGO practice.

I am also very proud of this well-researched piece on the history and current practices of uranium mining industry of Australia. Readers can enjoy learning more about the previously substandard practices and how these have evolved over time . http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/publications/Environmental_impacts_of_uranium_mining_in_Australia_May_2017_WEB.pdf

I am very proud to have delivered the *mandatory* greenhouse gas and energy reporting for the Beverley mining operations for several year under the National Greenhouse And Energy Reporting Scheme, all of which is then lodged publicly. A few thousand Australian corporations are captured by this legislation. They were a smaller client but it was good honest work. Not funding; work.

I am very proud of the investigation we undertook, in response to a brief, into opportunities in the nuclear fuel cycle which preceded the Royal Commission. The work became the submission to that process for the Department of State Development, and is also publicly available. Our findings were replicated nearly entirely by the Royal Commission report, which did indeed take a different view as to the readiness of advanced reactor technology. Some agree with that decision, some (including I) don't.

I am also proud to have, on occasion, passed a hat around after providing and professional and informative session, free of charge. People seem delighted to thank me in this way when given the opportunity.

In summary *I don't do* work that I am not proud of, and willing to discuss. To the contrary, I *want* to discuss it. Jim has, for years, wanted me to be something I simply am not.

My email address is ben@brightnewworld.org. I'm happy to take any questions at anytime.

A happy holiday season to all.

Some are very keen to tell us what we should not use to generate
electricity, but not too keen on explaining what we can use now that
solar & wind are off menu.

It appears we cannot divert the energy available to build solar & wind
in the time before the first ones are worn out.
Read Ugo Bardi's article;

http://tinyurl.com/yakte33o

Now that the required amount of batteries are too expensive pumped
hydro seems the only backup if we want to defy logic and use Solar & Wind.

http://tinyurl.com/yb85rk8o

It seems we are between a rock & a hard place.

Jim,

Ben Heard doesn't have squeaky green credentials, so what, you labelling the Minerals Council grotesquely racist simply indicates how far you have left the reservation. By your own logic, you are so biased that your postings cannot be taken without a large pinch of salt, and your polemic "friends of the earth" article reeks of desperation.

That there are several fast breeder reactors running commercially and more being built clearly shows that this technology is in its ascendancy, mainly due to its ability to consume the U238 as well as the U235 which makes its use of uranium orders of magnitude more efficient than most existing reactors, and not only does it produce a tiny fraction of the waste, but can burn the waste products of other reactors and the byproducts of the enrichment process. In short the existing waste from these older reactors could fuel the world's power needs for generations.

However, the restrictions the RC put on fast breeder reactors meant that Aus would only adopt them decades after other countries.

What a disgraceful and irrelevant personal reply by Jim Green to Ben Heard. It only illustrates the poor intellectual standard of his argument.